• 8 •
When the garbage-adorned Frederick II sailed from Acre harbor, he left behind a kingdom devastated by the attainment of its most cherished goals. The Templars, Hospitallers, and local barons watched with horror as the Holy Roman emperor destroyed their weapons and garrisoned their towns with his own troops. They were incensed by what they saw as the humiliation of Jerusalem: the Holy City was filled with Muslims, lacked fortifications, and had been handed over to an excommunicate. Frederick’s ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was an affront to their laws and the traditions of the kingdom of Jerusalem, a blatantly illegal action bordering on sacrilege. It is no wonder, then, that the Christians of the East saw the crusade of Frederick II as a war aimed not at the Muslims but at themselves.
STRIFE AND CONQUEST IN THE CRUSADER KINGDOM
Frederick’s reconciliation with Pope Gregory IX in 1230 did nothing to make his rule in the East more palatable. Resistance and open rebellion were everywhere. The lord of Beirut, John of Ibelin, became the leader of an opposition party that included virtually all the barons as well as the Hospitallers and Templars. Before Frederick replaced him with his own men, John had been regent (bailli) of Cyprus. He was easily the most powerful member of the native aristocracy, so it was natural that he should become the rebellion’s focus. In 1232, the city of Acre went so far as to declare itself an independent commune, separate from the kingdom of Jerusalem. John was elected the city’s first mayor. War between Frederick’s Hohenstaufen forces and the crusaders continued until 1233, when John captured Cyprus. Henceforth, the trappings of imperial government remained, but the real power lay in the well-connected Ibelin family.
Fortunately for the Christians, the Muslims were also in a state of disarray. The brotherly love of al-Kamil and al-Ashraf expired shortly after the conquest of Damascus. The two fought a bitter civil war until 1237, when al-Ashraf died and al-Kamil took Syria. The sultan did not have long to savor his victory; he died one year later. The Ayyubid Empire was split between his two sons: As-Salih ruled in Damascus, and al-Adil took Egypt. The two brothers quickly followed the example of their father and uncle by declaring war on each other. As-Salih succeeded in capturing Egypt but lost Syria in the process. He would spend much of his energy over the subsequent years attempting to regain it.
In 1239, Frederick II’s truce expired. The Muslims wasted no time in taking back Jerusalem, a task made simple by the fact that the city was undefended and surrounded. In a real sense, it had only been on loan to the Christians.
During the tensions between Syria and Egypt in 1240 and 1241, two crusades from the West arrived at Acre in rapid succession. Neither the first, led by Thibaut of Champagne, nor the second, led by Richard of Cornwall, had any important military victories, but together they successfully played the sides in the Muslim dispute against each other to gain territorial concessions. In return for an alliance with Egypt, the Christians recovered Jerusalem as well as other lost territories, including Ascalon, Sidon, Tiberias, and Galilee. It was a remarkable deal, one that brought the kingdom of Jerusalem to its largest size since 1187.
The last vestiges of Frederick II’s power in the Holy Land were eradicated in 1242 or 1243, when his son Conrad came of age. The barons declared the emperor’s regency at an end and invited the young Conrad to assume his throne in Jerusalem. They knew, of course, that he would do no such thing. Alice of Cyprus, the next in line for the throne, thus became regent. Conrad’s own nominations for his regency were ignored; indeed, Alice instructed the barons to henceforth ignore all orders from the king—which they happily did. She also revoked all grants made by Frederick in Conrad’s name. The last stronghold of imperial power was Tyre, which the barons besieged and captured. Hohenstaufen rule in Jerusalem was effectively at an end.
The sands of regional power shifted again when as-Salih allied with the Khorezmians of northern Syria to regain Syria and Palestine. In response, the crusaders allied with Damascus for the promise of additional land concessions. As part of the deal, the Muslim residents evacuated Jerusalem, leaving it for one last moment a Christian city. It still lacked serious fortifications. When the Khorezmians poured into the region in 1244, they easily captured it, massacred the Christians, and burned their churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The allied army of the Egyptians and Khorezmians was formidable. After dealing a crushing blow to the crusader-Syrian forces, as-Salih took Syria and reunited the Ayyubid Empire. In one devastating campaign, the Christians had lost all the gains won by Frederick II, Thibaut of Champagne, and Richard of Cornwall. Once again, they were confined to a strip of ports along the Mediterranean coast.
THE FIRST CRUSADE OF ST. LOUIS
The catastrophic events in the Holy Land did not escape the notice of the young king of France, Louis IX (1226–70). A man of great piety and enormous courage, Louis was eager to use the resources of his kingdom in the service of Christ. Those resources were considerable. Thanks to the wise policies of Philip II Augustus and Louis’s mother and regent, Blanche of Castile, France had emerged as the wealthiest and most powerful state in Europe. Much has been written about the character of Louis IX—all of it good. Even his staunchest enemies agreed that Louis was a man of integrity whose moral character was unassailable and whose devotion to justice was legendary. Like all men of his class, Louis was raised in a culture of chivalry that celebrated the crusade as the greatest use of Christian arms. It is no exaggeration to say that the liberation of Jerusalem was the single most cherished goal in his life.
Like Richard the Lionheart, Louis IX was a consummate crusader-king. The spirit of the crusade energized both men, and each had a wealthy kingdom at his disposal with which to pursue his goals. Both were gifted leaders of men, inspiring their troops to endure great hardships for the good of the crusade. Louis was much more cautious and deliberative than Richard, qualities that also made him a better king. Louis’s piety ran deeper as well. He saw the conquest of Jerusalem as the greatest act of devotion to Christ, whereas Richard viewed it as the greatest achievement of a chivalric warrior. In the field, Louis was a skillful tactician, although never the equal of Richard on that score.
Louis IX came to crusading honestly. He was the product of generations of crusaders on both sides of his family. His father, Louis VIII, devoted his final years to the Albigensian Crusade. By engaging France in a new crusade, Louis may have felt that he was fulfilling the dreams of a father whom he never knew. After coming of age, he considered crusading frequently, although his mother did her best to discourage him. At last, in December 1244, after a serious illness, Louis took the cross. When Blanche arranged to have the vow commuted, Louis stubbornly took it again. On this matter, he would not be moved, despite protests from many in his court.
Louis’s crusade was from the beginning a French affair. In truth, no one else was available. In his customary state of excommunication, the aging Frederick II was once again in open warfare with the church. Although the emperor had promised vast and numerous crusades to conquer Palestine and protect the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the popes no longer expected anything from him but words. The English were busy with their own turmoil between Henry III (1216–72) and his nobles.
The king of France was determined that his crusade would be well supplied, well funded, and meticulously organized. He oversaw every aspect of the long preparation. Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) granted him the right to receive a tenth of ecclesiastical revenues in his kingdom, and Louis instituted additional special taxes on his subjects to fund the enterprise. A large fleet was contracted from the merchants of Genoa and Marseilles, and enormous stores of provisions were stockpiled on Cyprus to provide support for the crusaders wherever they chose to operate.
Louis and his main fleet sailed on August 25, 1248 (photospread illustration 10). On September 17, they arrived at Cyprus, where they spent the winter waiting for more troops. By spring, a sizable force had assembled. The destination of the crusade had not been formally announced, although Louis had clearly decided on Egypt long before he arrived at Cyprus. Like many Christians, Louis considered often the tragic failure of the Fifth Crusade. He closely studied the event and was determined to improve on history. In a council of war, the crusaders settled on Damietta, the Nile port captured and then lost by the Fifth Crusade, as their initial destination. None of this was a surprise to the sultan of Egypt, who sent a garrison to the city and made camp with his own forces nearby. The sultan, too, was well acquainted with the Fifth Crusade.
The crusade fleet sailed from Cyprus in late May 1249, arriving at Damietta on June 4. Thirty-one years earlier the Fifth Crusade had prosecuted its siege of this city from a fortified camp on the west bank of the Nile. Louis planned to do the same. Determined to deny the French that beachhead, as-Salih arrayed his troops along the shore. The crusaders were prepared. Many of the knights boarded shallow-bottomed boats that could be maneuvered right up to the banks of the river. The French then struck with a bold amphibious assault. When the vessels opened, knights poured out, splashing through waist-deep water to fight the Muslim defense forces on the shore. Louis was among the knights, wielding his sword with righteous determination. When the Muslim cavalry came thundering down the beach, the French thrust their lances into the sands, breaking up the charge. Soon, the Egyptians were in full retreat and the crusaders had won their camp.
At this point, the Christians expected to begin a long siege of Damietta. It had taken the Fifth Crusade eighteen months to wear down the heavily fortified city, but luck was with Louis and his crusaders. When the Muslim forces retreated from the shore, they did not enter Damietta but instead marched directly to the sultan’s camp farther up the Nile. Seeing this, the garrison in the city began to suspect that they alone would have to suffer the depredations of a siege. The frightening stories of the wretched conditions in Damietta during the siege of 1218–19 were still vividly told throughout Egypt. The city garrison, therefore, followed the cue of the shore defense forces and marched back to the sultan’s camp. Seeing themselves abandoned, the citizens of Damietta also made a quick retreat from the city. To their astonishment, the crusaders discovered the city undefended and empty. They occupied it at once.
As al-Kamil had done in 1219, as-Salih moved his forces upriver to the fortified town of Mansurah. Louis did not give chase, for he did not want to repeat the Fifth Crusade’s mistake of getting caught by the Nile’s summer flood. He also wanted to wait for the arrival of his brother, Alphonse of Poitiers, who was bringing additional troops. Alphonse arrived on October 24, 1247, and Louis immediately called a council of war.
The arguments presented at the council in Damietta exposed the two contradictory motivations for leading crusades into Egypt. When Richard the Lionheart had proposed an attack on Egypt during the Third Crusade, he envisioned it as a means of breaking the back of Muslim power in the Near East, thereby ensuring the permanent safety of Jerusalem. This also was the initial motivation behind the Fourth Crusade and the Fifth Crusade. In Louis IX’s council, this position was championed by the king’s brother, Robert of Artois, who proclaimed that the surest way to kill a serpent was to smash its head. The goal, therefore, should be Cairo, the capital of the Ayyubid Empire. Only with Egypt under their control, he argued, could they hope to bring peace to the Holy Land.
The majority of the council opposed this plan. They saw conquests in Egypt not as ends in themselves but as a means to bargain for the return of the holy places. This idea had more recently developed during the Fifth Crusade, when the sultan proved willing to return the entire kingdom of Jerusalem in exchange for Damietta. It was further supported by the diplomatic successes during the crusades of Frederick II, Thibaut of Champagne, and Richard of Cornwall. The majority argued that the French should not risk the treacherous Nile delta but instead should sail to Alexandria. There, they could capture a rich and important city while remaining well supplied from Cyprus. Because they ruled the waves, the French could hold Damietta and Alexandria indefinitely, or until the sultan offered them enough in Palestine to make them relinquish their Egyptian prizes. This proposal was pragmatic, but it did not offer a long-term solution to the survival of the crusader states. The view of Robert of Artois was more ambitious, but as the debacle of the Fifth Crusade demonstrated, the risks were great. Louis deeply believed that God was eager to bestow great victories on his army of crusaders, and the ease with which they had taken Damietta confirmed this for him. He felt certain that similar victories awaited them at Mansurah and Cairo if only they put their trust in God rather than in clever bargaining. They would march to Mansurah.
The crusade headed south on November 20. Louis took his time, ensuring that lines of communication and supply from Damietta to the Nile were established and maintained. It took the army a month to reach Mansurah. They made camp on the same spot chosen by the Fifth Crusade, a wedge of land between the Nile and a tributary. During their journey south, the sultan died. Because his heir was in Syria, Emir Fakhr-ad-Din took command of the forces and managed to maintain order.
Across the river from the French camp lay the town of Mansurah and the camp of Fakhr-ad-Din. The latter had sufficient forces to repulse any landing of troops by boat. The French began constructing a causeway, but the Muslims bombarded it with stones and Greek fire. They also began to dig away the shore where it would make land. Weeks dragged by with little progress. And then an opportunity fell into Louis’s lap. An Egyptian informant, in exchange for a rich reward, revealed the location of a ford farther down the tributary. At once, Louis and his men made plans for a surprise attack on Mansurah. They decided to send an advance force, commanded by Robert of Artois, to the ford under cover of night. Robert would cross the river and establish a secure base on the other side. Louis would then follow with the main body of the army, and the combined forces would sweep down on Mansurah. Hugh of Burgundy was given command over a small defensive force to hold the current crusader camp.
On February 7, 1250, Robert of Artois crossed the ford as planned, but rather than wait for Louis, he decided to seize the moment and attack the Muslim encampment. It was a foolish risk but enormously successful. The Egyptians were caught completely unaware. Fakhr-ad-Din did not even have time to find his sword before he was cut down. In short order, the camp was taken. Flush with victory, Robert then gave the order to attack Mansurah itself. This, too, was a foolish risk, and this time the results were disastrous. Robert and his knights could not fight effectively in the tight and winding streets of the city. They were also greatly outnumbered—the bulk of the Egyptian forces were quartered in the city. Almost the entire advance force was killed, including Robert himself.
As planned, the king crossed the ford but found no trace of his brother. He did not have long to wonder about him, for he soon heard the thunder of hoofbeats as the Egyptian army charged to the ford. Retreat was impossible, so Louis’s forces prepared to fight. The difficult and bloody battle lasted all day. Louis and his men slowly fought their way along the river until they brought themselves just opposite the crusader camp. From there, Hugh of Burgundy was able to provide missile support and to ferry reinforcements across. The Egyptians retreated back into Mansurah. When the sun set, the French had won the opposite shore of the river and were in possession of the Muslim camp.
Because of the botched surprise attack, the crusaders had acquired much less than they anticipated and paid much more than they planned. Casualty rates were high, and the frequent Muslim sorties drove them higher. Louis now lacked sufficient numbers to take the city of Mansurah, let alone contemplate the conquest of Cairo, yet he refused to lose hope. So strong was his belief that God would continue to bless his army with victories that Louis would not hear of retreat back to Damietta. He knew that the new sultan was not popular with the elite Turkish slave army (known as the Mamluks), so he held onto the hope that a coup might throw the Muslims into disarray, leaving Mansurah vulnerable. That was not to be. On February 28, the new sultan, Turan-Shah, arrived to take command of the Egyptian forces. He ordered dismantled vessels to be carried by camel down the Nile past the crusader camp, where they were to be reassembled. Catching the crusaders by surprise, the Egyptian galleys severed the shipping lines back to Damietta. For the French, it was the worst possible news. Despite all their careful preparations, the crusaders found themselves in precisely the same predicament that had destroyed the Fifth Crusade. The king refused to give up his position, despite starvation and sickness in the ranks. By the end of March, though, he no longer had a choice. Clearly, Turan-Shah’s hold on power would outlast the French food reserves. The king abandoned the hard-won camp outside the city and returned to the crusader camp across the river.
The weakest were put aboard the few remaining crusader vessels, which then attempted to run the Muslim blockade. Only one made it back to Damietta. Louis refused to board a vessel, despite a dangerous illness that had sapped all of his strength. When his brother angrily told him that his gallantry would slow the progress of the army, he replied, “Count of Anjou, count of Anjou, if you think I am a burden to you, get rid of me; but I will never leave my people.” On April 5, the weak and starving army headed north. Muslim forces harassed them the entire way. After the army had trudged halfway to Damietta, Louis’s advisers informed him that further progress was impossible. With great sorrow, Louis sent envoys to the sultan of Egypt, offering his surrender.
Turan-Shah was not as merciful as al-Kamil. He immediately ordered the massacre of the poor and the sick in the Christian army. The rest, including the king and the nobility, he took as hostage. At the end of April, Louis and the sultan struck a bargain. In return for the release of all hostages the Christians would hand over Damietta, evacuate Egypt, and agree to pay 800,000 bezants. Louis himself was to remain in Egypt until half of the ransom had been paid. But things did not go quite as planned. The coup that Louis had long anticipated finally happened. The Mamluks revolted against the sultan, killed him, and seized control of Egypt. The Mamluks were at first unwilling to abide by the terms of the agreement, but at last they realized that they needed both the money and Damietta.
On May 6, Damietta was once again surrendered to the Muslims. Louis was released, along with many, but not all, of the upper nobility. On May 8, the French paid 400,000 bezants, thus allowing the king to leave Egypt. Contrary to the agreement, the Mamluks did not release the thousands of hostages they still held.
It was a somber group that assembled for Louis’s next council of war. With one voice, the royal vassals, including Louis’s own brothers, proclaimed the obvious: the crusade was over. It was time to go home. Back in France, Blanche of Castile urged Louis to return and take up the reins of state. But the king was not yet finished in the East. If his vassals wished to go home, he could not gainsay it. Each had done all that could be expected of a crusader. He announced his intention to travel to the Holy Land and do whatever he could for the Christians there. He was also determined not to leave the Levant until he had won the release of his countrymen in Egyptian prisons.
St. Louis in the Holy Land
Louis arrived at Acre on May 13. The patriarch of Jerusalem, the masters of the military orders, and the cheering citizens of the city welcomed him in a splendid ceremony. Louis had no legal authority in the crusader kingdom, which remained under the titular control of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Neither did he have claim to power through military strength, since he arrived with only about a thousand troops. Yet Louis’s authority in the Latin East was vast. During the next four years, he was the virtual ruler of the kingdom. His power flowed not from raw might, but from what the ancient Romans called auctoritas, the authority that one obtains through fame, glory, and moral uprightness. As in Europe, the barons of the East saw the king of France as the epitome of chivalric and Christian virtue. No one dared to contradict him, for they were absolutely certain that his interests were solely for the good of the Holy Land. His mere presence helped to cool the factionalism that had torn the crusader states asunder. The contrast between the visits of Louis IX and Frederick II could not have been more stark.
There was more opportunity to make progress in the kingdom of Jerusalem than Louis might have thought. After the assassination of Turan-Shah, the Muslims of Syria and Egypt were once again at war. Because the two sides were evenly matched, both were willing to offer much to the Christians in exchange for an alliance. Louis bargained cleverly, playing each side off of the other. Both promised to restore Jerusalem and its kingdom to the Christians after the war, but Egypt also offered to release the remaining French captives and cancel the outstanding debt of 400,000 bezants. As had occurred during the crusade of Thibaut of Champagne, there was considerable debate among the Christians over which side they should favor. In their customary way, the Templars and Hospitallers strongly disagreed on the question, with the former supporting the Syrians and the latter arguing for the Egyptians. For Louis, there was no real question. Egypt offered the liberation of his men and the cancellation of a sizable debt. In early 1252, he made an alliance with his former enemies, the Mamluks.
The war was plagued with fits and starts, and as it turned out, the Christians were never able to link up with the Egyptians. Finally, on April 1, 1253, Egypt and Syria made peace. There was no longer any need to court the westerners. Diplomatically left out in the cold, Louis turned his attention to building projects in the kingdom. With his own funds he improved the defenses of Acre, Caesarea, Jaffa, Sidon, and other smaller fortresses along the coast.
Throughout his stay in Palestine, Louis continued to receive letters from home asking him to return. His mother died at the end of 1252, and Louis’s two brothers, Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou, had taken over the royal government. There were plenty of reasons why he should return to his own kingdom and fewer and fewer reasons why he should remain in the East. By the end of 1253, it was clear that without many more troops there was nothing more he could do. He had calmed the internal dissension of the crusader kingdom while greatly improving its defensive position. His last act was to establish a permanent garrison of one hundred knights in Acre that would henceforth be maintained by the French crown. On April 24, 1254, almost six years after his departure from Europe, Louis IX sailed home.
Louis never forgot the Holy Land; indeed, the thought of its restoration animated his entire reign. Over the next decade and a half, he sought to perform his duties as a Christian king so well, and to care for his subjects with such devotion, that God would deem him worthy to rescue the land of his Son. As William Chester Jordan has argued, Louis’s reforms at home can best be understood when viewed through the king’s intense desire to win Jerusalem. He wanted to build a government that could efficiently and effectively fight the wars of God. He kept a sharp eye on events in the East and sent funds regularly to assist the crusader kingdom.
THE MONGOLS
The news from the East was not good. After the king’s departure from Palestine, the crusader states appeared secure for the foreseeable future. In 1255, they made a ten-year truce with the Mamluks, a reason for some optimism concerning the relations between the Christians and the new masters of Egypt. The arrival of the Mongols, however, changed everything.
The Mongols, an Asiatic people, had already built through conquest the largest empire the world had ever seen, stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean. They were ferocious fighters, mercilessly cruel and fantastically successful. After conquering China and other parts of the Far East, they stormed through the heart of the Muslim world, rapidly capturing Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. Christians did not shed a tear to see the most opulent areas of Islam destroyed. A few of the Mongols were known to be Nestorian Christians, members of a sect that held that Christ’s divine and human natures were distinct and separate. This was hardly a vast theological gap to be bridged. Various popes expressed the belief that the European Catholics and Mongolian Nestorians could come to an agreement if it meant the defeat of Islam.
The arrival of the Mongols appeared to be presaged by the legend of Prester John, a popular tale familiar to almost all Europeans. It held that a great and powerful Christian monarch, perhaps the successor of one of the magi who attended the Nativity of Christ, ruled a mighty empire in the Far East. When he learned of the Muslim conquests in the Mediterranean, he would make plans to lead the forces of his empire to defend the Holy Sepulcher and his fellow Christians in the West. No one was certain where the story came from, but there was not a Christian alive who did not hope that it was true. Naturally, expectations were raised when the Mongols appeared in the East, trampling Muslim armies in their powerful advance. Over the course of the previous six centuries, Islam had conquered three-quarters of the Christian world. It is not surprising, then, that Christians prayed that the Mongols were their long-awaited rescuers—but they were not, at least not directly.
While he was still in the Holy Land, St. Louis himself had opened negotiations with the ruler of the Mongol Empire, the great khan. The king proposed mending their minor theological differences so that they could ally against the Muslim conquerors of the land of Christ. Although these words were translated for the Mongols, they were still unintelligible. Nestorianism was the religion of only a tiny handful of Mongols. In any case, religion was not why they waged their wars of conquest; it was a side issue for the Mongols, a matter of personal taste. They expanded their territory because they had the power to do so and because they wanted still more. As the khan responded to a similar letter from Pope Innocent IV in 1246:
You have also said that supplication and prayer have been offered by you, that I might find a good entry into baptism. This prayer of thine is not understood. Other words which thou hast sent me: “I am surprised that thou has seized all the lands of the Magyar and the Christians. Tell us what their fault is.” These words of thine I have also not understood. The eternal God has slain and annihilated these lands and peoples, because they have neither adhered to Jenghiz Khan, nor the Khagan, nor to the command of God.1
The Mongols’ ultimate goal was world conquest, which, they believed, would usher in a new era of order under the control of an all-powerful khan. From their perspective, Louis was a petty chieftain, a ruler of a small kingdom that they would conquer or assimilate in due course. In reply, they demanded that Louis surrender France and prepare to send an annual tribute to the great khan. Needless to say, talks went nowhere.
Christian applause for the Mongol conquests began to subside a bit when the Mongols entered Syria, capturing Aleppo and then Damascus. They were led by Kitbogha, a Nestorian Christian. The Christians in the north, at Antioch and in Armenia, had already submitted to the Mongols and thereby survived. When Kitbogha entered Damascus, he was accompanied by the king of Armenia and the prince of Antioch, thus putting three Christians at the head of the Mongol advance. This did not put the Christians in the kingdom of Jerusalem at ease. They counted all three men as traitors to the faith who would just as happily deprive the Latins of their own lands if given the chance.
In fact, Kitbogha did not attack their kingdom, nor did he make plans to. Instead, he sent an ambassador to Cairo demanding the immediate submission of Egypt to the Mongols. The Mamluk sultan, Kutuz, responded by killing the ambassador and mobilizing his own forces for war. His timing was good, for at that moment news arrived from the east that the great khan had died and that civil war had erupted four thousand miles away in Karakorum. Kitbogha’s forces were thus depleted. The Mamluk troops were led by the brilliant but thoroughly ruthless general Baybars, a Kipchak Turk. At the Battle of ’Ayn Jalut in September 1260 the Mamluks decisively defeated the Mongols and captured Syria. It was a momentous victory: No one on three continents had ever pushed back a Mongol conquest. With Baghdad already in Mongol hands, it was Egypt that now took center stage in the Islamic world.
CHANGE AND DECAY IN THE CRUSADER KINGDOM
Not long after his victory at ’Ayn Jalut, Baybars became sultan of Egypt. This was bad news for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Although Egypt was rich and prosperous, its chaotic and capricious governments had kept it relatively weak. The Mamluks changed that. Under the command of Baybars, it became a powerful threat. The new sultan was initially kept busy establishing control over Syria, but there could be no doubt that he would soon turn his attention to Palestine.
While external threats grew in magnitude, internal dissension again weakened the struggling kingdom. For decades, the Templars and Hospitallers had been at odds. Aside from their mutual refusal to recognize Frederick II as king in 1229, the two military orders agreed on little. Even trivial issues found them staking out opposing positions. The tension grew to such levels that it erupted in open warfare. One of the vehicles for internecine fighting was the War of St. Sabas, which began as a case in the civil courts. In 1251, the Venetians and the Genoese disputed ownership of some houses that belonged to the monastery of St. Sabas in Acre. After five years of legal wrangling, the case was no closer to resolution, and tempers flared violently. In 1256, the Genoese armed themselves, seized the disputed houses, and attacked the Venetian Quarter of Acre. The Venetian merchants rallied and drove out the Genoese. Philip of Montfort, the lord of Tyre, took advantage of the disturbance to expel the Venetians, who had owned one-third of that city since their crusade of 1122. Quickly, the opposing factions in the Latin kingdom chose sides in the war. The Templars and Teutonic Knights supported Venice, whereas the Hospitallers and most of the barons backed Genoa. The war climaxed with a massive naval battle between the two maritime states fought just off the port of Acre in June 1258. Venice was the victor. Genoa abandoned Acre altogether and concentrated its resources on Tyre. The Genoese had their revenge a few years later when they backed the soon-to-be-crowned emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus (1261–82), who reconquered Constantinople in 1261 and expelled the Venetians.
The nature of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was changing fundamentally in response to changes in the world. The Mongol conquests made possible new trade routes to the Far East that allowed a merchant to travel from the Black Sea to the Sea of Japan while remaining in the Mongol Empire. The route was safe, quick, and free from numerous and shifting customs duties that plagued the routes through Muslim lands. Black Sea ports started to bustle with activity as goods from the Far East were loaded aboard vessels bound for Europe. Constantinople also did well because it commanded the Bosporus Strait, the only connection between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. As a result, business slowed noticeably in the markets of the crusader states. The Italians made do with less exotic payloads, but the local barons could not afford the loss in revenue. One by one, they began to sell their lands to the military orders, which were always well off thanks to pious contributions to their houses in Europe. Soon, power in the kingdom resided primarily with the Italians and the military orders—and they were usually at each other’s throats.
MAMLUK CONQUESTS
It did not take long for Baybars to settle matters in Syria and turn his attention to the Christians. The Mamluk sultan waged a vigorous jihad aimed at removing once and for all the problem of the Christian presence in Palestine. In 1263, he led a successful raid into Galilee and destroyed the cathedral of Nazareth. Two years later, he conquered Caesarea and Arsuf. In 1266, he took the Templar fortress of Safad, massacring the inhabitants after promising to spare their lives. According to an inscription memorializing his victory, Baybars “exchanged unbelief for faith, church bell for the call to prayer, and the Gospel for the Qur’an.” In general, Baybars made it a point to massacre or enslave Christians wherever he found them, be they in great citadels or in modest villages. As his biographer, Shafi’ bin ‘Ali, recorded, Baybars was determined to wage war “until no more Franks remain on the surface of the earth.”2 In 1268, he captured Jaffa and brutally sacked the city.
Later that same year, Baybars led his forces north against the great city of Antioch. It fell after only four days. The sultan ordered the doors of the city closed and the inhabitants, including women and children, massacred. This atrocity shocked Christian and Muslim chroniclers alike. It was the single greatest massacre of the entire crusading era. Upset to see that Count Bohemond VI was not in his city, Baybars wrote to him to describe the carnage that he had missed:
You would have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses’ hooves, your houses stormed by pillagers and ransacked by looters, your wealth weighed by the quintal, your women sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money! You would have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of the false Testaments scattered, the Patriarchs’ tombs overturned. You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling on the place where you celebrate the Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars, bringing sudden death to the Patriarchs and slavery to the royal princes. You would have seen fire running through your palaces, your dead burned in this world before going down to the fires of the next, your palace lying unrecognizable, the Church of St. Paul and that of the Cathedral of St. Peter pulled down and destroyed; then you would have said: “Would that I were dust, and that no letter had ever brought me such tidings!”3
The loss of Antioch was a terrible blow to the Christians. It was the oldest of the crusader states, having stood firm for 170 years. What remained of the Latin East was in desperate need of aid from the West.
THE SECOND CRUSADE OF ST. LOUIS
No sizable crusading force had arrived in the Holy Land for almost three decades. This was not for lack of interest in Europe, nor because of popular disillusionment with the crusades; rather, it was the result of the proliferation of crusades to destinations other than the Levant. Crusade fervor in Europe was just as strong as ever; it was simply directed elsewhere. Crusades in Spain and the Baltic continued to attract recruits. The popes also had responsibility for the safety of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which was always in desperate need of help. After Constantinople fell in 1261, the pope proclaimed a new crusade to reclaim it. Closer to home, there was the continual problem of the Hohenstaufens in Italy. After the death of Frederick II’s son, Conrad, in 1254, Pope Alexander IV (1254–61) proclaimed a crusade against his illegitimate brother, Manfred. That crusade continued well after Alexander’s death. In 1264, Pope Urban IV (1261–64) invited Charles of Anjou to invade the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, defining the war as a crusade. Louis IX, who had earlier attempted to arbitrate a peace, fully supported his brother’s crusade against the Hohenstaufens, although he worried about expending crusade energy in wars against Christians. In 1266, Charles defeated Manfred and became king of Sicily.
The Christian losses in the Levant were a source of great anguish to the king of France. Although he continued to send money and men to the East, Louis longed to be able to lead a crusade in defense of Jerusalem once again. After his brother’s victory in Sicily, Louis saw no reason to wait any longer. He discussed his plans with Pope Clement IV (1265–68), who was pleased by the prospect but somewhat concerned with what would become of southern Italy in the absence of both Louis and Charles of Anjou. Charles and Louis spoke often about the crusade. Charles made no secret about his desire to go to Constantinople and wrest the city from the newly restored Byzantine emperor. Having just won the crown of Sicily, Charles dreamed of wearing the imperial diadem in the city of Constantine. Louis, however, would hear no more of wars against Christians.
At an assembly of the barons of France on March 24, 1267, Louis and his three sons proudly took the cross of the crusade. The barons were unimpressed. Louis was not the swashbuckling warrior of his youth; he was in his fifties and becoming frail. To many, Louis’s desire to win Jerusalem seemed the unrealistic dream of a young man, one that should have faded away long ago. His friend and comrade in the previous crusade, John of Joinville, expressed the changing values of the time when he excused himself from again accompanying the king on the expedition to the East:
And I told him [Louis IX] this, that if I wished to do what was pleasing to God, I should remain here, to help and defend my people; and if I put my body in danger in the pilgrimage of the cross, while seeing quite clearly that this would be to the hurt and damage of my people, I should move God to anger, Who gave His body to save His people.4
The royal court was unanimously opposed to the expedition, but Louis was granitic in his resolve. The king’s brothers, Charles of Anjou and Alphonse of Poitiers, announced that they would join him. Outside France, the crusade attracted other royal adherents: King James I of Aragon (1213–76) and King Henry III of England (1216–72).
Now the governmental reforms that Louis had instituted in France were put to the test, and they performed marvelously. The king had little problem in collecting the ecclesiastical and secular tithes for his expedition and was easily able to procure the necessary supplies. He arranged for fleets to be waiting in Genoa and Marseilles. If anything, Louis’s second crusade was even better organized than his first.
The crusade was to depart in June 1270, but the Genoese were late in providing vessels, so it did not sail until July. The rendezvous point was Cagliari in southern Sardinia, where Louis convened a council of war. The Spanish were not there. Their fleet had been broken up by storms, and most of the survivors returned home. Henry III of England had decided not to crusade after all, but he sent his son, Edward, to lead the English crusaders. They too had not yet arrived.
The destination of the crusade had not been announced. Most, including even the owners of the vessels, expected that Louis would again take the crusaders to Egypt. The assembly was stunned, therefore, to learn that they were headed for Tunis.
Scholars have long wondered at Louis’s reasons for attacking a relatively weak Muslim state in the western Mediterranean. Although it appears that Charles of Anjou did not have a hand in the decision, he could scarcely have opposed it. Tunis lay directly across the sea from Sicily, and the emir continued to support Hohenstaufen sympathizers there. The conquest of Tunis not only would deny an outpost for rebels in the south but would also give Charles solid control over the western Mediterranean. Because Louis would not allow the crusade to go to Constantinople, for Charles, Tunis was second best. Louis may have believed that the capture of Tunis would harm Egypt and thus make its subsequent conquest easier. If so, he was misinformed. Egypt received almost nothing from Tunis; indeed, the sultan in Cairo was delighted when he learned of the crusade’s destination. The king may also have received information from Dominicans close to him that the emir of Tunis, Muhammad I, was willing to convert to Christianity if a strong Christian army would support him. If Louis believed this story it might have convinced him to head to Tunis. That information too was faulty.
Whatever the reason for Louis’s decision, it is clear that he envisioned the trip to Tunis as only a brief stop on his way to the East. The city was neither well fortified nor well defended. Once captured, it could serve as a useful place to await further recruits. Scrupulous crusaders might question whether this Western town was a legitimate target for a crusade, but the word of Louis IX was sufficient to dispel any doubts.
The crusade landed in Tunisia on July 18, 1270. The crusaders quickly captured a fortress on the site of ancient Carthage and established their camp. Charles of Anjou was delayed in Italy, and Louis decided to wait until his arrival with more troops before launching an attack. Muhammad sent a few sorties to harass the crusaders, but Louis strictly ordered his men to avoid skirmishes. He did not want headstrong and glory-hungry knights to harm the crusade as his brother, Robert of Artois, had done in Egypt. The summer sun beat down on the crusaders and nurtured an outbreak of deadly diseases in the camp. Soldiers began to die in great numbers. Soon, even members of the royal family fell ill. Louis’s eldest son, Philip, became extremely sick, and another son, John of Nevers, died. Louis was stricken with grief over the loss of John, who had been born in Damietta during the king’s first crusade and now died in the ruins of Carthage on his second. It seemed that God was sending down an angel of death to ravage the crusade army, and Louis could not guess why. Eventually, Louis himself fell ill. Day by day he grew weaker, until it was clear to all that he would not recover. On the night of August 24 he asked to be laid out on a bed of penitential ashes. That night, in his sleeping delirium, he could be heard to cry out, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” The next day the Most Christian King of France died.
A few days later, Charles of Anjou finally arrived. Legally, Philip III (1270–85) was in command of the crusade, but because he remained ill he deferred to his uncle. Charles immediately opened negotiations with the emir. Muhammad was eager to talk, and in short order the two men came to an agreement. In exchange for the departure of the crusade, the emir granted a series of concessions to Charles’s kingdom of Sicily and paid a large war indemnity, of which Charles would receive one-third. The rank-and-file crusaders were upset when the deal was announced. Charles had successfully negotiated a victory for himself, although he had taken no part in the crusade. Some even blamed him for Louis’s death, for if he had arrived sooner they would not have had to endure the heat and disease of the crusader camp for six agonizing weeks.
The second crusade of Louis IX was a success for no one but Charles of Anjou, and he profited mightily. Despite very high casualties, the French had failed to achieve anything, or even to reach their final destination. But the reputation of Louis IX did not suffer in the slightest. After a life of exemplary piety and Christian kingship, he died as he lived, in the service of the faith. A mere twenty-seven years later, the church honored her defender by canonizing him as a saint.
Shortly after Charles struck his bargain with the emir, Prince Edward arrived with his English crusaders. He was understandably upset to find the French preparing to return home. After wintering in Sicily, Edward led his small force to Acre, where he landed on May 9, 1271. He found the crusader kingdom in a pitiful state. When Baybars learned of the French decision to attack Tunis, he immediately resumed his attacks on Christian strongholds in the East. In March, he captured the huge Hospitaller fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, the greatest Christian outpost in the Levant. Edward lacked the troops to threaten Baybars, but he possessed diplomatic skills. He roused the Mongols to raid and plunder in Syria, then negotiated a truce of ten years and ten months with the sultan of Egypt. Unable to do more, he returned to England, where he discovered that his father had died and that he was king.
The crusades of St. Louis were the best-funded, best-organized enterprises that Christendom had ever launched. They were led by a king of enormous piety, skilled in the art of war and devoted to the restoration of Jerusalem. If they could not succeed, what could? One might expect that disillusionment and despair would result, yet despite these failures and a century of similar ones, the Christians of Europe remained steadfast in their commitment to the Holy Land. The crusade remained a central part of life and the restoration of the Holy Land a constant prayer of all the faithful. The fire of crusading zeal still burned brightly, and, despite his failures, St. Louis became the model of the selfless warrior of Christ. Few could shake the foreboding feeling, however, that the armies of Islam were simply too powerful to resist.
NOTES
1. Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary Survey, 260.
2. Hillenbrand, Crusades, 231, 237.
3. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, 311.
4. Geoffrey of Villehardouin and John of Joinville, Memoirs of the Crusades, trans. Frank T. Marzials (New York: Dutton, 1951), 320.